The Many Voices of Feminism

Scholars discuss the most important challenges facing women in the 21st century

n the post-feminist era of the 21st century, are the aims and goals of feminism still relevant? Will feminism survive the rush to globalization? What universal lessons can we learn from the unique ways women around the world have advanced their concerns?

These are a few questions students and faculty of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin have confronted this year in a series of events focused on the issue of global feminism.

The highlight of the year was the residency of Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer, human rights activist and the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Ebadi visited campus in April 2009 to speak about democracy in Iran. Several months later, she was speaking out against her government’s crackdown of those who protested the results of the presidential elections.

To honor her visit, and to spotlight the diverse issues facing women around the world, we invited eight faculty members from the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies to answer the following question: What is the most important challenge facing women in the 21st century?

Each of our respondents cross international borders in their exploration of the struggles and achievements of women, examining issues such as gender equity in the workplace, women and political participation, and access to education and health care.

Mounira Maya Charrad

Associate Professor, Department of Soci ology, Department of Middle Eastern Studies

In the Middle East, women confront issues of legal rights and cultural discourse in a way that has become the stuff of high drama on the world stage. In Islamic countries, women’s rights as defined in family law are the crux of the matter. At stake is the set of legal rights and responsibilities men and women have in the family and, by extension, the society at large.

The central questions concern choice of marriage partner, age at marriage, rights and obligations of each spouse, polygamy, conditions for divorce, custody of children and inheritance for men and women. At issue is whether conservative interpretations of Islamic family law prevail, or whether legal reforms alter the balance of power the law gives to men and women in their roles—not only as spouses but also as members of larger kinship units and of communities.

The countries of the Middle East exhibit considerable diversity in regard to women’s rights. Some countries such as Tunisia, Turkey and Morocco have gone a long way in expanding women’s rights. In several countries, however, the law still deprives women of personal autonomy.

Women of the Middle East also face challenges that emerge from an acute tension between the local and the global. In the West, discourses on the Middle East are replete with images of victimized women hidden behind veils. In the Middle East, debates on women’s rights overflow with criticism of feminists importing Western ideas deemed inappropriate to the culture of the region.

Finding themselves at the center of this tension, women’s rights activists are framing their demands by reclaiming Islam and offering new readings of the Islamic tradition. They are also developing strategies that allow them to make connections to transnational networks concerned with gender equity, while retaining their cultural authenticity. How to navigate between the different discourses is likely to remain a daunting task for the foreseeable future.

Terri Givens

Associate Professor, Department
of Government

The most important challenge facing women in the 21st century is gaining access to leadership. Society needs more of the qualities women can bring to leadership positions. These are described in a 2005 study by Caliper, a workforce development company:

• Women leaders are more persuasive than their male counterparts.
• Women leaders learn from adversity and carry on with an “I’ll show you” attitude.
• Women leaders demonstrate an inclusive, team-building leadership style of problem-solving and decision-making.
• Women leaders are more likely to ignore rules and take risks.

In the United States, women leaders from my generation face the challenge of breaking through the barriers created by those of the older generation reluctant to release the reins of power to a new generation. Women need to take advantage of those who are willing to mentor the younger generation.

Talk about the “glass ceiling” is still relevant, but we need to move beyond the notion of a “ceiling” and think more carefully about how we develop women leaders, beginning with elementary school, and even into academia, where women are in the minority in the full professor ranks (as revealed in the university’s recent Gender Equity Report), and find limited options when it comes to running departments or colleges.

However, it’s important to note that women from my generation were some of the first to benefit from Title IX legislation that gave girls equal access to sports, particularly organized teams. There is a direct correlation between women’s involvement in these types of activities, and their confidence in working with men and taking on powerful leadership positions. We grew up during a time when women (and minorities) gained greater access to higher education. Although women and minorities are beginning to make headway in boardrooms, legislatures and even university hierarchies, there is a long way to go.

Women need to continue to make strides in balancing between their roles as caregivers and professionals. Studies show men are taking on more “second shift” duties but women still shoulder most of the family and household responsibilities. It is vital to our democracy that women’s voices carry equal weight in all aspects of society.

Susan Sage Heinzelman

Associate Professor, Department of English; Director, Center for Women’s and Gender Studies

All women live their lives under the threat of violence. Even those of us who appear to be the most privileged in terms of economic and social status can never be entirely free of the risk of sexual or physical assault, or other more subtle forms of harassment. For so many women and girls, that threat has been actualized in domestic abuse, rape, slave trafficking, forced prostitution, female genital mutilation and the many other ways in which women are reminded every day they are second-class citizens.

In Uganda, their faces are scarred by acid attacks because they are too “independent.” In Afghanistan, their schools are destroyed by religious fanatics because they wish to think for themselves. In Southeast Asia, their vaginas are sewn up repeatedly so they can be “sold” as virgins because they have been denied the right to own their own bodies.

International law proclaims the right of the individual to be safe from unprovoked violence and, yet, only occasionally, is there any outrage at the violence women and girls suffer every day and everywhere simply because they are female. Their lives are limited, their prospects dimmed and, as great as the loss is to those who are scarred for life, it is not confined to the victims. The loss to society of the potential for a productive and fulfilling life is immeasurable.

Women alone cannot solve this epidemic of violence against them. We must motivate the international community to take up the issue and recognize that gender-related violence is as serious a threat to the well-being of the world as the AIDS crisis or ethnic genocides. The international community must develop strategies to address violence against women through a combination of legal reforms and economic incentives.

Legal reform and laws that protect women and girls can do only so much, however, unless the state is willing to enforce these laws, especially in those areas of women’s and girls’ lives conventionally regarded as “private.” Moreover, the international community must make it economically disadvantageous to tolerate or promote violence against women and girls and make those who receive aid embrace the benefits in health care, economic empowerment and educational opportunities for women and girls in their society.

All of these strategies imply a level of interference in the affairs of others—whether those affairs are perceived as public or private, affairs of the state or family affairs. There seems no alternative, however, unless we are willing to concede that what goes on behind closed doors (or state borders) is none of our business.

Juliet Hooker

Assistant Professor, Department
of Government

As someone who was drawn to feminist theory by black, Latina and Third World feminism, my first answer to the question is there is no one most important challenge facing women in the 21st century, as these will be different depending on where you live in the world.

What this means is feminism’s central challenge is to recognize the variety of ways in which women (and men) experience sexism and gender oppression, and to find a way to link struggles for gender equity around the world. Otherwise, the risk is feminist movements across the globe will view one another with suspicion and distrust, and see their various struggles as incompatible.

Consider the controversies over women and veiling in the Middle East and in countries with immigrant Muslim populations. They could appear to be completely disconnected and directly opposed to women’s rights to sexual freedom and reproductive rights central to Western feminism.
Yet feminist arguments for veiling (or wearing hijab) that claim these prevent sexual harassment and harmful obsession with women’s appearance are connected to the concerns of feminists in the United States who are concerned about the exploitation of women as sexual objects.

One of the central tenets of feminism is that women should not only be free from the threat of sexual assault, rape and sexual harassment, but should also be able to freely express themselves as sexual beings. The key challenge for global feminism today is to recognize the links between such seemingly disparate elements of a global effort to make gender equity a reality.

Robert Jensen

Associate Professor, School of Journalism

Given the disastrous consequences of the human assault on the ecosystem that makes our lives possible, the most important 21st century challenge for women is the same as for men: Can we change the way we organize ourselves socially, politically and economically in time to reverse this ecological collapse? Can we learn to live in sustainable balance with the non-human world so that we might make it to the end of the 21st century with our humanity intact?

In facing these social, political and economic challenges, I believe women have a crucial contribution to make through feminism. My own intellectual and political development is rooted in the feminism I learned from women, both in the classroom and community. Much of my work has addressed men’s use and abuse of women and their sexuality in the sexual-exploitation industries: prostitution, stripping and pornography.

But from those women I also learned feminism was not merely a concern for “women’s issues” but also a way of understanding power and critiquing the domination/subordination dynamic that is central to so much of modern life. The roots of that dynamic are in patriarchy, the system of male dominance that arose only a few thousand years ago but has been so destructive to people and the Earth. Patriarchy is incompatible with justice and sustainability.

The challenge for feminism is to articulate an alternative to the illegitimate hierarchies that structure our lives: men over women, white over non-white, rich over poor, First World over Third. That isn’t “women’s work” but “feminism’s work,” which we all should undertake, in conjunction with the many other intellectual and political movements concerned with real justice. If we can change the way we treat each other, those new non-hierarchical social arrangements may help us solve the fundamental problem of the destruction inherent in human domination over the non-human world.

 

 

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